Week 10 - Wrap Up

1. What was your biggest discovery?
       I don't think I had a particular "biggest" discovery, but I had a couple favorites. My favorite resource for fun was CAMIO. It was easy to serch and the images were great. Learning Express was my other favorite. It has some great practice tests and I think some of our students are unaware that it is available to them.

2. How will you promote or use the resources?
      Being a health science librarian, many of the resources I use when working with students and faculty are specifically aimed at health and medicine. However, I do work at the reference desk providing general reference service to all students regardless of major, faculty, staff, and community memebers. Many of the resources provided by the SD State Library will be very helpful for the wider range of interests my general users have.

History and Genealogy Resources

AncestryLibrary

In my AncestryLibrary search I found my birth record and my Dad’s obituary.

I could not find my grandpa in the census records, but I did find his WWII enlistment record, his U.S. Veteran’s grave site record, and the Social Security Death Index Record.

My AncestryLibrary page doesn’t seem to have a photos and maps tab, so I couldn’t figure out how to perform the search.

HeritageQuest

I started browsing in HeritageQuest and ran across a book titled A Narrative of the Griswold Family. I decided to look at it for no other reason than when I read the title, the first thing that came to my mind was “That there’s an RV…don't you go falling in love with it now, because, we're taking it with us when we leave here next month.”

I turned out to be very cool. It was published in 1931 by Ruth Lee Griswold and followed the family from England in the 1600s to the US. There were pictures of the various family members and homes and drawings of family trees. It was quite interesting.

Sanborn Maps

I looked at Vermillion in November 1903. The index had 3 sheets. I found USD’s Old Main building. It was very interesting to look at the campus from back them when there were very few buildings compared to now. I also looked at in Brookings in November 1916. The index had 9 sheets. I found SDSU or the South Dakota State College and Agricultural School as it was called then.

I found the panning a bit clunky, but not too bad. I liked that clarity wasn’t lost when you zoomed in.

ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

ArchiveGrid

1.      The Notes and Summaries section stated: Sitting Bull, also known as Tatanka Iyotake or Tatanka Iyotanka or Ta-Tanka I-Yotan, was a Native American shaman and leader of the Hunpapa Sioux. He fought against the Crow Indians and was wounded in battle on several occasions. Sitting Bull greatly opposed the encroachment of the white men. He led Sioux and Cheyenne warriors against U.S. soldiers of the 7th Cavalry at the battle of Little Bighorn. After the battle, in which many were killed, Sitting Bull led his tribe into Canada, where they lived until surrendering to U.S. forces. After his capture he toured with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Sitting Bull was killed while resisting arrest for his unwillingness to abandon the traditions of the ritual Ghost Dance, which had been outlawed.

The autograph card I was searching for is located at the Cornell University Library.

2.      I decided that I wanted to search for a copy of Gray’s Anatomy. I tried multiple ways of searching, I tried searching for Henry Gray and used the formal name of the oldest editions of the book, but in the end, didn’t even come close to finding what I was looking for. The closest I got was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania collection containing several brass dies that were used in the book. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. I did not find this resource to be intuitive or easy to use.

CAMIO

1.      When I typed in Paul Revere, I found a teaspoon, tea urn, and sugar bowl made by Paul Revere.

2.      When searching Sioux, I found pictures of gloves and other items of clothing, pipes, drawings, dolls, and many other items made by the Sioux people.

3.      The first thing I actually searched for was the Capitoline Wolf or the She Wolf. I was looking for the bronze statue of her suckling Romulus and Remus. Since I could not find it in the database, I was quite bummed, but carried on anyway.

I chose Rodin as my artist. I was not at all surprised to find that there were numerous pictures of The Thinker and The Age of Bronze. However, I was surprised that I found Eve, but not Adam, nor were The Three Shades or The Kiss(my personal favorite) in the database. At least The Gates of Hell was, which I happen to think is a very cool piece. The database did include some of his paintings, etc., but I prefer his sculpture. There were some very nice pieces included in the database, but also some very big holes.

4.      This would be a helpful resource for some our undergrads that are taking an art appreciation course. We have some really cool art resources at our library already, but this is also a nice resource.

5.      The Favorites view has some great tools, I like that you can zoom in and out and the photo didn’t lose its clarity.

Worldcat and OAIster

1.      Worldcat

I chose to search for the book The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. 1209 libraries have item #1. The top library listed was Augustana College. The call #s listed are -- LC: ZA4237; Dewey: 004.67/8; NAL: ZA4237. It looks like it’s the only book he has written, but I did find a link to a presentation he gave that is available on the TED website. I clicked on the subject Invisible Web and got 32 items however, most were duplicates of the same 2 items.

Also included in the record were a picture of the cover, an abstract, the publisher, date of publication, ISBN and other information.

2.      OAIster
 
I found it kind of funny that the first item that came up in my South Dakota search was Flood Tracking for North Dakota. When I went into the record and clicked the access link, I found the complete title was Flood Tracking Charts for North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and the Missouri and Yellowstone Basins of Montana, so the subject search was accurate, but the title of the item was misleading.

eBooks on EBSCOHost

1. I decided to search for climate change simply because I couldn’t think of anything that I was really interested in this afternoon but it’s a topic that has come up in some conversations recently. Just to see what would happen, I put climate change in the default search box. I got 108 results, the first being Business Climate Shifts: Profiles of Change Makers. Which, it’s probably no surprise, was not what I was thinking of when I typed in climate change. The 3^rd item that came up was Introduction to Ecotoxicology and I noticed it had this subject term: SCIENCE / Global Warming & Climate Change. So it would probably be useful to me. Then I searched for “climate change” and got 18 results. Not all were relevant to the topic I was searching for, but at least there were fewer to look through.

2. I began typing constitution into the search box and one of the suggested terms was Constitutional history, so I decided to try that. I only got 8 results, but among those I found The Constitution of the United States of America and The Articles of Confederation. They were available on EBSCO though Project Gutenberg. So that was kind of cool. As for other books, even when I did a very basic search just for the word constitution and got 176 results, I only came up with 1 book that would interest me on Constitution Day. It was Representing Popular Sovereignty: The Constitution in American Political Culture. I could check it out and download it, so apparently it was one of my library’s ebooks.

3. When I performed search 3, I got 56 results with the majority on topics of Native American culture and history. There was on title about African American pioneers and a “mish-mash” of books on literature. This would be very helpful in finding information on Native American history published in Nebraska.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

1.      I did click on the title list to review all titles, but I actually preferred the look of the home page. I am one of those people that like to see the cover of a book and I like how the books were listed by subject instead of just alphabetically.

 I chose to look at the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine. It consists of 5 volumes with brief articles on various diseases, treatments, and medical tests. You can choose the volume you wish to view and browse the articles alphabetically or you can search by keyword within the book. This would be an excellent resource for an undergraduate or community member looking for thorough, yet easily understandable information. The feature linking to related articles at the bottom of the page is a great tool.

2.      I chose to search for Vitamin D. The first 4 results were 1. An overview of vitamin d, 2. An overview of vitamin d deficiency, 3. An overview of vitamin d deficiency, and 4. An overview of rickets. Result number 1 was what I was specifically thinking of when I typed in my search term, but the next three were also very relevant to vitamin D.

I tested the listen feature and found it to be much better than many others. The voice was still a bit robotic, but even if shut my eyes, I could still understand what was being said and the flow of the speech was quite good.

3.      I reviewed Electronic Resources Challenge 2012, Hanna’s Blog, Thru My Eyes, and Annie’s Ideas. All 4 of them made great use of this resource and explored angles I hadn’t necessarily thought about.

Proquest

1.    I decided to search for information on Sonny Barger. I find him very interesting. He is considered the founder of the Hell’s Angels, was a part of the infamous Rolling Stones concert, and has spent time in federal prison. But…he’s also written books and been in movies, and recently has guest starred on one of my favorite TV shows. You can buy Sonny Barger merchandise. The man has managed to brand himself. It blows my mind!

Anyway, I found lots of information in Proquest on Sonny Barger. There were reviews of his books, articles about him that included interviews; there were even newspaper articles about his criminal trial. I think I found some pretty cool stuff.

1a.   I commented on Today’s thoughts blog.

 2.    I searched for the Journal of the Medical Library Association. Proquest contains the full text back to 2003. I also decided to search for journals with library in the title. Proquest has 21 titles available.

SIRS Discoverer and Issue Researcher

SIRS Discoverer

1.      I searched for aramadillos and got a total of 78 results. Of those, the first 13 were the most relevant. Most of the results had a reading level on moderate, a few were easy, and very few were challenging. There were also quite a number that were considered a general reading level. I did not see a good description as to what this meant.

There were also pictures and activities included with some of the articles. It is nice, especially for the K-9 group, that all articles are in full text.

2.      The databases feature, which the challenge blog states is one of the most useful features, is not very prominent on the homepage. It is a section that unless directed there, I would have probably overlooked.

·        The country information contains some teacher resources on country facts. The worksheets come in 3 levels: easy, moderate, and challenging. The page also contains information on the population, economy, government, geography and history as well as a picture of the flag and a map of the country.

·        In Maps of the World, first I tried to open to open the Bull Run 3-D map, but all I got was the little red X and no indication of how to open it. I thought that it would have been really cool to look at, especially since I used to live 5 minutes from there and have been to the battlefield many times. It’s a great way to learn history. Since that didn’t work, I decided to try an outline map of the US. This one had only outlined of the states and stars where the capitals were located. This would be good for determining ones knowledge of where the states are located and what their capitals are.

·        I selected the Biographies area for my third search and found an entry for Jesse James, the stagecoach robber, but not Jesse James, the modern day motorcycle builder. However, there are entries for other “modern” stars.  There is an entry for George Harrison, but none of the other Beatles. There was entry for Alexander Hamilton, but not for Aaron Burr. It really made me wonder how it was decided who to include.

SIRS Issue Researcher

I browsed through a few Leading Issues. The Research Tools include a topic overview, a timeline, global impact and statistics. Centered on the page is a pro/con Issues section with 3 articles listed on both sides of the topic. There are also articles from newspapers and magazines, reference articles, viewpoint articles and various web and video resources.

For the Curriculum Pathfinder, I chose Health. It included an interactive portion distortion quiz. There were sections on Adolescent, Family, and Personal Health, Community and Environmental Health, Healthy Eating, Wellness Resources, and information on certain Diseases and Conditions.

Learning Express

Step 1. Setting up an account was very simple and easy.

Step 2. It was kind of inconvenient to have to add the test I wanted to try to “My Center” when I only wanted to try it. I then had to delete it from “My Center” when I was finished. However, if there is a test that I really want to take and possibly come back to later, having it in “My Center” is great. I also would have liked for the “View Answers” button to have been closer to the top of the page because that is what I would consider to be the most important part of a practice test.

Step 3. I thought the Creating Great Cover Letters course in the Job Search and Workplace Skills center would be very valuable for those looking for work. There were many good tips and the information was nicely laid out, easy to read, and also quite quick to read for those without a lot of time to spend. I liked the menu on the left that enabled you to go easily view a section that related to what you were looking for.

Step 4. I decided to browse through the ebooks to see what was available. I ended up looking at “501 Sentence Completion Questions.” The book was very well laid out and easy to use and seem as though it would be very valuable in both increasing a person’s vocabulary and as practice for standardized tests.

World Book Public Library Edition

World Book Online Kids – Mammal Search

I searched for Aardvark 2 ways. First, I typed “aardvark” into the search box on the home page. This search brought up 3 articles and 2 pictures. Next, I clicked on the “Plants and Animals” oval on the left side of the screen, then clicked on “Animals”, then “Mammals.” Aardvark was the first mammal on the list.

About the aardvarks habitat: The aardvark is an African animal that lives in the ground.

 

World Book Online Info Finder – Mammal Search

I searched for aardvark in this database also. I typed “aardvark” into the search box on the home page and got 4 encyclopedia articles, a dictionary definition, a table, a picture, and 5 back in time articles.

 About the aardvark’s habitat: The aardvark is an African mammal that sleeps in a burrow during the day.

World Book Online Reference Center – Country Search

I searched for Turkey.

On the left side of the screen, the search results were listed by type of publication, eg.) encyclopedia articles, primary sources, maps, tables, etc.

 
On the right hand side of the screen the primary sources of information were listed.

In the center column were encyclopedic articles. The first was on the Turkey, the country, the second was on Turkey, the animal.

When I clicked on the encyclopedic article for Turkey, there was a menu on the left with the different sections of the article listed so you could go straight the information you would like. On the right there was a list of related information.

 
I think the encyclopedic overview would be a good start for my patrons in getting a “feel” for the country. The primary sources and related information would be useful if a patron was looking for information on a specific aspect of the country.